7 Ace Arduino Based Projects

The makers are everywhere. Whether it's in a local supermarket or the bustling offices of big cities, you're sure to find one or two creators, or even more, designing their next project or finding an existing one to invest in. They all share one thing in common: the desire to create, whether for the good of humanity or for their personal pleasure. The Make: website is a fantastic place where makers can share their creations and be tempted by the multitude of projects they can find there. After having explored and summarised some of their Raspberry Pi projects in a previous article, I thought it would be interesting to hunt down some Arduino projects on their website.

#1. Build your own Arduino Weather Station

Image courtesy of Make: website.

At this time of year, the weather is a common topic of conversation, especially in northern Europe, so why not get rid of speciality channels whose forecasts are not always reliable by creating your own weather station? This Arduino project could be a first step in the development of your own local weather station, get cracking!

#2. Frozen pipes will be nothing but a bad memory.

This small project aims to protect your water pipes from winter temperatures by preventing them from freezing during the cold and dark winter months. This project would have been very useful to me a few years ago when the drain pipe of the kitchen sink, which also contains the outlet pipe of the boiler discharge valve, froze when the boiler valve started to leak. I still wonder why the builders of my house decided to install the overflow pipe in the wall cavity and in the drain pipe of the sink!

Ah, the traffic! Who hasn't dreamt of a good traffic jam?! Uh, no, not really, unless you have a passion for creating bad words with the license plate letters of vehicles that are ahead of you. This fun project using the Adafruit Feather HUZZAH (124-5505) takes an average physical map or, in this example, painting a bucolic bridge, and uses a chain of NeoPixels, skillful programming and the Google Maps API to create an interactive traffic alert system, fabulous!

#4. Presentation of Chip-E, Arduino's bot.

Image courtesy of Make: website.

Biped robots are apparently not easy to build, but this one seems to be! Chip-E is its name, has among other things an LCD screen for the "eyes", an IR sensor and some RGS-13 servos. He can walk around happily all day if necessary. I think he's great, and his incredible movements and robotic personality delight the child in me. I've loved robots since I was a kid and I'll never forget these toy robots with glowing eyes and whose chest opened to blast laser beams at my annoying brothers.

#5. Minecraft Activated Arduino Alarm

I do love a good video game, having grown up playing the likes of Manic Miner, Atic Atac, handheld Galaxy Invader (still got that!) and countless console systems between then and now. I have had a few goes on Minecraft, my daughter used to live on it on my old Xbox 360, but I tended just to attack everything with whatever weaponry I had, rather than build anything. Now, for those who don’t know, Minecraft lets you build stuff, mine stuff and gather goodies, generally, that is, you can go to war if you so wish in a Hunger Games arena. All of that aside, this awesome project lets you protect your ‘virtual goodies’ that you have harvested in Minecraft in the real world! So if some sneak thief is trying to make off with all your hard-mined goodies while you are away from your trusty games console, this device will let you know! Awesome!

#6. Arduino Rotary Phone

Image courtesy of Make: website.

I always find myself drawn to old analogue phones I stumble across when aimlessly wandering around antique fairs and shops, maybe it’s the slow almost hypnotic annoyance that comes from attempting to dial a number and listening to that familiar ‘whirr’ of the dial, whatever it is, they always catch my eye. Now they are perfectly useless in this digital age unless you intend to keep it as an ornament, however, all is not lost if you fancy repurposing that old phone and dragging it kicking and screaming (or dialling and whirring?) into the 21st century. This project takes one such phone and turns it into an interactive experience, ringing at random times, playing back previous recordings of past and present users and so on. Barking mad, but fun nonetheless, and because you can!

#7. Arduino Cocktail Drinkbot

Image courtesy of Make: website.

Who doesn’t like a good party? And the key to a good party, generally that is, is a healthily stocked bar (be that fruit juice or otherwise). Now, more often than not, the host is left running around mixing drinks and filling glasses and in general, being genial, perhaps missing out a little on the very reason for the party. Now, what if you could automate all that cocktail mixing, drink pouring and general servitude and let an Arduino do the donkey work? That’s just what this project aims to do, well apart from carrying drinks around I suppose. Let this project mix it up and let those peristaltic pumps do all the measuring and mixing for you, cheaper than hiring a cocktail waiter, or you could just stick on your DVD of Cocktail to save any hassle?

#8 Bonus: How crackers is this? Drill powered mini bike.

Image courtesy of Make: website.

Now I know this isn’t an Arduino project, but I found it during my Make: explorations and I couldn’t resist adding this just for fun. This chap wanted a small electric cycle he could keep on his boat for short beer runs to the local marina store whenever he docked his cruiser. Using a power drill and a broken child’s electric scooter, he did just that and it hits 0-10mph in 2 secs! I don’t know about you but I really want to have a go at knocking up one of these, I just need to finish off my MkII Golf GTi, that old Vespa and Honda scooter projects first though, so many projects, so little space.

Make: isn’t just a website for electronics projects, there’s a whole heap of other subjects like woodworking, paper craft, photography, drone building and so much more, check out their website and get inspired.

Comments

The arduino is an open source controller. it is very useful for us. I learn more about arduino and i was attend the inplant training in trichy for ece that gives the practical knowledge.
For details: https://inplanttrainingintrichy.co.in/inplant-training-in-trichy-for-ece.html